


We Don't Stutter When We Sing

by harborshore



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-20
Updated: 2013-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-05 08:06:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1091569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harborshore/pseuds/harborshore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four times Grantaire used magic to hide. And one time he didn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Don't Stutter When We Sing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [starscrapers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/starscrapers/gifts).



> The title is from "The Shine" by Dave Hause. Just because.

1\. 

The alley is empty, but the patrol is getting closer. Grantaire shakes his last cigarette out of the pack. Ordinarily he’d never waste it on something like this, but needs must. 

He snaps his fingers, lighting it, and blows gently on the smoke. It fans outward, upward, swirling thicker and thicker until there’s a fog filling the air, too thick to see through. Grantaire holds his breath. Any minute now.

The first of the Runners turn the corner. Grantaire can see him as a glittery outline in the fog (an adjustment to the spell that took him a week to work out, and he’d never have gotten there if not for Bossuet accidentally spilling the wine on the candle Grantaire was using to experiment with the smoke) and breathes out in relief when he hears the Runner start to cough violently. The spell used to irritate his own lungs as well, and Joly helped him figure out a fix, but Grantaire hasn’t had to use it since.

He backs up slowly until he reaches the wall at the end of the alley. If he buys himself enough time without drawing attention to himself, the smoke should spread far enough out of the alley that the patrol won’t be able to figure out its point of origin. Leaning against the wall, he draws a careful breath, listening as the Runners yell and cough and run around as the smoke gets thicker.

Then the wall goes soft. Grantaire only has time to yelp in surprise before he’s pulled through it, landing on the floor and looking up at a ring of men around him.

“What in the—“ he says.

“You brought Runners into our part of town,” says one of them. He’s pretty, Grantaire reflects absently, long blond hair twisted over one shoulder. He also looks like he might strangle Grantaire. That’s a familiar look.

“Not on purpose,” Grantaire says mildly. “I didn’t exactly have much time to reflect on where not to run. And what, pray tell, is your part of town? Who are you?”

“Never mind that,” one of the other men says. “Why were the Runners after you?” 

“Oh,” Grantaire says. “Well. It’s not very interesting, and I’ll just be going, thank you for the timely rescue—“ He makes as if to get up, but is pushed down again by the fellow who spoke first. “Careful, gorgeous, “Grantaire says. “You’ll have me thinking you like me.” He grins and oh, that anger is beautiful. 

“You might find us a sympathetic audience,” the second man says, leaning down and touching Grantaire’s swelling cheek where he’d dodged too slowly, the first time the Runners caught up with him tonight. As it turns out, they don’t like it when you prevent them from making an arrest. Grantaire isn’t even sure why he did, except that he saw them pushing a scrawny kid around and rushed in among them, giving the kid time to escape, forgetting he was alone tonight and thus shouldn’t get into trouble.

“Combeferre—“ The irritation is palpable. Grantaire loves it.

“Come on, Apollo, cut me some slack,” he says, then considers. “Really, that’s the wrong god. Nemesis—no, vengeance is female. And not nearly as beautiful.”

Combeferre rolls his eyes and tilts Grantaire’s jaw up. Clearly he’s some kind of doctor; the steady grip is familiar. “Stop antagonizing Enjolras,” he says. “Really, are you always this bent on getting yourself in trouble?”

Well, that’s an easy one. “Yes,” Grantaire says. “Really, always. Life is more fun that way.”

Combeferre runs a finger down Grantaire’s cheek. It tingles, then—“Hey,” he says. “Hey, you healed me!” 

“Yes,” Combeferre says easily. “I do that. What do you do?”

“I’m—“ Grantaire pauses, looking up at the still angry Enjolras. What a mouthful of a name. If Apollo is wrong, maybe Ares will suffice. There’s certainly enough war in his gaze. “I’m evasive,” he decides. Better not be too forthcoming. It also happens to be true, sort of: one of his specialties is evasive maneuvers. Spells, incantations, you name it. He wants to be left alone; his magic helps.

“You are that,” someone in the group mutters, but the tension is dissipating. 

Combeferre rises and offers him a hand. Grantaire lets himself be pulled up. He can’t see a way out of the room and wonders whether he’ll have to charm it out of one of them. No matter. For now, he can stay.

 

2.

It’s been three weeks, and Grantaire has yet to abandon the group. He could, if he wanted. The Friends are not a secret group and much of their activity is public enough that Grantaire could walk out of their front door and no one would blink. Advocacy group, resource centre, library – they’re everything to anyone that needs them. And they may not be well-liked by the authorities, but most of what they do isn’t yet illegal.

The keyword being most, of course. Grantaire is fairly sure the weapons stockpiled in the basement, the many secret doorways he can see hidden in the walls (being a concealment specialist comes in handy sometimes), and the clear signs of a group getting ready for an armed assault – they plan to occupy the city, he thinks – would not be looked upon with disgruntled allowance, as the rest of their activities are.

Their leader may not like him but the rest seem to trust him, and he gradually gets access to the hidden corridors, never letting on that he knew they were there before. The complex is enormous, and Grantaire doesn’t understand how it fits into an ordinary apartment building, so he goes to find the architect, Prouvaire. His work room is on the—well, Grantaire’s not sure which floor he’s on. The fifth? Only accessible by turning three right corners after the third staircase, then walking up two flights and down again. Maybe it’s floor four-and-a-half.

The room is full of sculptures and structures, built in every kind of material Grantaire can think of. There’s an intricate metal statue, full of tiny sharp spikes, that looks like it might fall to pieces if you pulled one of the pins out of its, well. Spine, Grantaire supposes. It looks like no animal he has ever seen. It’s beautiful. Like a poem straight out of the book Grantaire scavenged last week, out of this world but somehow just right.

Prouvaire smiles when Grantaire asks about the building and gestures at the second chair by his workbench. Flicking his long dark hair out of his eyes, he picks up a green sheet of paper.

“Here, sit,” he says. “And call me Jean, please. If this is the actual house—“ he folds a simple box, placing it on the table, “then this is the first addition to the space.” A second box in orange, only slightly smaller than the first, is placed inside. “But then, well.” He folds something that looks like a small spiky star, putting it inside the second box. “We got creative. See, I realized there was no need to just put more space inside the first. That actually made it more complicated to get from the original building to the new rooms, because then you’re still limited to its floorplan and it’s like you’re building increasingly tiny copies of the first house. Instead, we tried branching out.” He adds a second spiky star, somehow hooking it to the first so that it sticks out of the box. “You see?” 

“Not really,” Grantaire says. “But it’s a fascinating thought. So the corridors are—you’re almost using infinity spirals, aren’t you.” 

Jean grins. “Yeah, if we dared, but not quite.” 

Grantaire wonders. Mathematics at the university seems a lifetime ago, but. “Could you trap someone in one?”

Jean blinks at him. “…yes. Yes, you—“ Not even looking, his hands reach out for more paper. “I have to—“

“I’ll see myself out,” Grantaire says. 

Behind him, Jean mutters and folds the paper, quick fingers making shape after shape. Nodding to the metal statue, Grantaire exits.

\--

He nearly falls through the wall some minutes later when it parts at his touch, but when he hears an agitated voice he mutters a quick word, raising his ever-ready I’m-not-here cloak. It only works for people who aren’t aware of him, and it only works for so long, but it’s trusty. 

“Cosette, I just.” That’s Marius. Grantaire rolls his eyes. He finds Marius rather tedious, if sweet.

“Well, if you wouldn’t go on so about the regime,” Cosette replies. “Besides the obvious, it’d be nice if you could keep in mind what they’ve done.” She looks and sounds sad, but there’s a streak of steel a mile wide in Cosette, which Grantaire loves about her.

“Your father,” Marius says, like he only just remembered. Grantaire sighs. Really, Pontmercy is too much. 

“Yes, Marius, my father.”

“But he, he’s alright now, isn’t he?” 

“No thanks to the new laws,” Cosette mutters. Too right, too. Grantaire has several friends who can’t make ends meet because they were once convicted of a crime. Anything from shoplifting to demonstrations, no matter how small, and you were placed under strict limits regarding how much you could make, where you could live, and so on.

Marius swallows. “I’m sorry, darling,” he says. “I just, it’s terrifying, what this all could lead to. Sometimes I wish my friends would just live and let live.”

“That,” Cosette says, and Grantaire can’t look away from her face when she speaks, “That depends on what you define as living.”

3\. 

They gave him a room from the start, but it takes Grantaire quite a while to acquire paint once more and to start painting there. He needs to know a room before painting in it, needs to feel sure of a place.

Also, there’s the magic.

He whistles as he paints, drawing energy from the walls into the forest rising from the page in front of him. It’s wild, branches brushing against Grantaire’s face, stretching towards the ceiling. He smiles as a tree snakes around his shoulder, tugs at his hair as if to say hello, and keeps on growing. 

A door slams behind him and Grantaire draws a breath, clenching his free hand and shrinking the trees back down.

“What was that?” Of course it’s Enjolras.

Grantaire turns around, keeping an easy smile on his lips. “What was what?” he says.

“The—trees, they were wonderful,” Enjolras blurts, less composed than Grantaire has ever managed to goad him into being. 

“Ah, they’re nothing,” Grantaire says. “Useless showmanship.” Which, incidentally, was what Enjolras called Grantaire’s magic a day or two ago. Not that Enjolras actually knows about everything Grantaire can do, but he said it in spite after Grantaire snapped his fingers and made a giant illusion of a see-through Enjolras wagging his finger like a stern teacher.

Enjolras flushes. “I didn’t mean it that way,” he says. Ah, honesty. Enjolras is never anything less than annoyingly forthright about his own flaws. 

Annoyingly beautiful too, of course, but Grantaire isn’t going to dwell on that..

“It doesn’t matter,” he says, because it doesn’t. He carries his art with him everywhere. Illusions are products of the mind, as it were, which means that the only difference is whether or not his illusions are visible to the rest of the world. He sees them all the time. 

“They were beautiful,” Enjolras says, still clearly unwilling to look away from Grantaire. “If we lived in a different time, perhaps the Friends could put a greater emphasis on art.” 

“Maybe then I’d get more involved,” Grantaire says, smiling crookedly. “Or if there was dancing. Apollo, can you make sure there is dancing?”

Enjolras huffs. “Better yet,” he says, “You should learn to do that to the Runners. That would be a fantastic evasive maneuver.”

Grantaire knows. He also knows how to do that to the Runners already, doesn’t actually need an easel to pull it off, but art is art and revolutionary struggle is revolutionary struggle and Grantaire doesn’t deal well with mixing the two. Or getting engaged in the second. There had been a brief moment in his, well, relative youth, when he was still at the university, when he’d thought being called the brightest of his age meant something, when change seemed like it was a possibility. A new dawn was coming, and so on.

But then people died, and he was jailed for a time, and his hope for change turned out a cruel joke. So he hid. And kept hiding.

4\. 

 

Everything has gone spectacularly wrong very quickly, or no one would have thought to ask Grantaire for help, he is sure. But apparently someone who came in for legal aid was actually a Runner spy and managed to spot one of the many not-so-legal things the Friends are doing, and then there was an attack on someone and Grantaire isn’t sure what happened, but suddenly there were barricades in the street erected to slow the Runners down while as many people got out through the tunnels as possible.

Then Jean went down from a projectile to the head while outside to secure the complex walls, and Combeferre couldn’t revive him. No one else could tweak the tunnels the way he could, and so they were stuck. Gavroche – why there are children involved, Grantaire will never understand – went out to do something stupidly brave and was shot, by an actual gun, which he wasn’t shielded from. And Courfeyrac and Combeferre went out to get him.

Grantaire is unsurprised that he ended up helping. That is what he does, he helps when there is no hope because he’s an idiot that way. So he’s holding the tightest illusion he’s ever managed, breath short with strain and mind reeling with the whiskey he had to drink to manage it, so that Combeferre and Courfeyrac can get Gavroche into their house. 

 

Enjolras’s shoulders are so tight as he watches them carry Gavroche in, and then Combeferre tending to him. Grantaire watches them all, and takes another gulp of whiskey.

“He will not die,” Combeferre says after a little while, and everyone starts breathing again. Except Grantaire, whose head is starting to ache even more. He hasn’t let go of the illusion yet, and he has an idea, so he’s keeping up the cover of an empty street until he can execute said idea.. 

“He will not die,” Combeferre starts again, “but he needs help and more than I can do here. So does Jean, and Eponine.” Grantaire knows. Eponine is gravely hurt indeed, and they can’t get out without Jean. 

Grantaire nods to himself. His idea will do nicely. He nudges Courfeyrac. “Matches, please,” he says, and when a puzzled Courfeyrac gives them to him, Grantaire manages to get to his feet and walks outside, scuffing marks into the cobblestones as he goes and dropping a match every three steps. 

Mixing illusion and reality is difficult, and he’s never been very good at it. He’s going to get this one right, though. 

The last match dropped, he snaps his fingers, and a line of fire springs up. It’s real fire, tightly contained. Grantaire lets it grow and then starts winding it through his fingers, because he’s weaving now. If he makes it look like the house is burning down and the initial fire is real, the soldiers will run. They will come back in an hour when it becomes obvious that the fire isn’t real, but they will run now, and the others will be able to get away. He hopes. Here, at the end, he seems to have rediscovered his ability to hope.

Grantaire’s head is hurting quite badly now, but he is almost done.

“Yes,” he says softly, and the street bursts into flame. He sees the soldiers run and he feels himself fall, slowly. The cobblestones feel soft underneath him, and he has time to wonder why before it all goes dark.

.1

Grantaire wakes to a splitting headache that seems even worse than before he thought himself dead. Which seems unfair, if you ask him.

“Never do that again,” Enjolras says. Enjolras by his bedside. Surely this is a dream. Enjolras pokes his shoulder, quite hard. Not a dream, then.

Grantaire winces. “What part?” he says.

“All of the parts,” Enjolras says. “I’d rather you mock all my plans than kill yourself executing one of your own.”

Grantaire has to smile at that. “I did save you,” he points out.

“You did,” Enjolras says. Everything is very blurry but Enjolras is very close and so Grantaire can see him nod. Can see him smile. “It was very stupid and very brave.”

“I learned from the best,” Grantaire says, and Enjolras shakes his head.

“You _are_ one of our best,” he says. “You always were, I was a fool not to see it.” Grantaire isn’t sure he can cope with that. He wants to roll over and pretend not to listen until Enjolras goes away, but he doesn’t. 

“I just took a chance,” he says.

Enjolras shakes his head again. “You knew it would work,” he says. “And Jean woke up and we got out, and we got you out, but don’t take those chances with yourself again, I don’t,” he swallows. “I don’t like it.”

“Okay,” Grantaire says gently. “I think I can promise that. If you could contrive to get yourself and the others into less trouble—“

“I probably can’t promise that,” Enjolras says, smiling a little. 

“No,” Grantaire agrees.

“You’ll just have to stay and help me think better,” Enjolras says.

“I can try,” Grantaire says, ducking his head.


End file.
